Guerilla Gardening: Not Vandalism, but Beautification

Two unidentified persons snuck through the L.A. streets with their weapons of choice: a shovel and a pickaxe. Under the patchy lighting of the streetlights overhead, they led a pack of similarly covert individuals to the desired location. The party members referred to each other by their aliases. Their leaders were known to them simply as “Mr. Stamen” and “Roly Poly.”

The mission was to plant a “guerrilla garden.” The “gardeners” pick their spot, whether it’s a plot of land next to a freeway bypass or on a city sidewalk, and without a permit or any rights to the land, they start digging and planting.

LA Guerrilla Gardening (LAGG) is a nonprofit organization that began two summers ago in Hollywood. It all started when a group of friends were meeting for “Mr. Stamen’s” 27th birthday party. “Mr. Stamen” rejected the notion of a typical party bar venue for the occasion and chose to plant a garden instead. The party guests were suddenly reborn as “guerrilla gardeners.”

“We had no intention of making it a big thing,” said “Roly Poly,” co-founder of LAGG with “Mr. Stamen.” “[We] weren’t trying to start anything, but it snowballed from there.”